What amount of change should be expected in a student’s full DESSA and DESSA-mini results?
Overview
This article will answer the frequently asked question: What amount of change should be expected in a student’s full DESSA and DESSA-mini results?
The amount of change noted in student’s scores depends on a number of factors including how much risk and adversity the child is experiencing, the degree of fidelity in which social and emotional learning strategies are being implemented, the consistency of the raters, etc.
However, in general, we typically find that a good program doing a decent job of implementing social and emotional learning activities sees on average a 3-5 T-score point change across one program year. Another good way to consider this is that a common rule of thumb in the social sciences is that change of only 1 T-score point is negligible or meaningless. A change of 2, 3, or 4 points is a small change. A 5, 6, or 7-point change is a medium change, and any change of 8 points or more is a large change. Usually, social science and education folks are very happy to get a medium change over a one-year period.
Check out the downloads below to access a template that calculates DESSA and/or DESSA-mini score changes.